Delay in the Cal Supreme Court

Today's DJ has H&L's Kirk Jenkins in Delay in our Courts of Appeal, about appellate timing. He begins with the benchmark standards:

In 2014, the Court Management Committee of the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators took another look at the problem, with assistance from the Conference of Chief Judges of the State Courts of Appeal, the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks and the ABA. The 2014 project set the following standards:1. Seventy-five percent of civil and criminal petitions for review should be either granted or denied within 150 days, and 95 percent should be granted or denied in 180 days;2. Seventy-five percent of cases should proceed from grant of review to final disposition within a further 180 days, and 95 percent should be finished in a further 240 days.

Regarding the Cal. Supreme Court:

Civil appeals averaged 323.41 days from grant to oral argument -- almost double the ABA's guideline -- in 1993. By 2000, the number was up to 476.76 days from grant of review to argument (and a further 76.35 days from argument to decision). By 2005, the lag time from grant to argument was up to 532.78 days. Within five years, it was up another month to 562.31 days. Since 2014, the average lag time from grant to argument has exceeded 600 days every year.....The Supreme Court's decisional process -- the lag time from the filing of the last brief to oral argument -- has been taking much longer than the ABA guidelines, and has been increasing in recent years. In 2008, civil litigants waited 279.68 days from the completion of briefing to argument. In 2016, the lag time was just short of a year -- 355.06 days. Last year, it was over a year -- 385.48 days.

...
Over the past 10 years, civil cases have averaged between eight and 12 months from the filing of the last brief to oral argument, and criminal cases have frequently averaged 14 to 19 months.

Today's DJ also has Moskovitz on Appeals in Appellate Adventures, Chapter Seven: "Is the Statement of Facts Important?" in which Professor Plato exclaims that the statement of facts is "the most significant part of the brief!" Plato also suggests presenting the standard of review before the facts:

"It's customary to discuss the standard of review only after the Statement of Facts, usually in the first section of the Argument. But I don't want the judge to wonder why my Statement of Facts reads so favorably to my side. She might think I'm doing what a lot of lawyers do: ignore the substantial evidence rule and simply tell their client's story. So often I tell her right up front: I lead my Statement of Facts with a short explanation of how the standard of review lets me to present these facts this way."